The Dinner Before the Deal follows Wei Dongming, the Shanghai Managing Director of Horizon Group, as he prepares for a high‑stakes business dinner in which the guest list grows from a simple two‑party affair into a multi‑tier structure involving a private equity LP/GP split, a strategy consultant, and the possible attendance of a senior government official. Wei must work with his executive assistant, Chen Lina, to resolve the seating arrangement for a private dining room at a Shanghai restaurant—a task that, in the Chinese business context, is anything but administrative.
The case uses this single evening to teach the underlying grammar of Chinese banquet seating: a spatial language that encodes commercial relationships, political weight, institutional hierarchies, and interpersonal deference. The case is structured so that the seating problem escalates in four steps, each step adding one new variable to the table.
Upon completion of this case, students will be able to:
• Identify the fundamental spatial axis (back wall vs. door side; host’s right vs. host’s left) that organises a Chinese business banquet.
• Apply the buyer–seller hierarchy to correctly assign Guest of Honour and second‑guest positions.
• Distinguish between principals and supporting roles (consultants, coordinators) and place them correctly at the table.
• Resolve LP/GP seating conflicts by tracing the underlying capital–operator relationship.
• Reconfigure the entire table when a government figure of higher political weight is present.
• Articulate three to four governing principles of Chinese banquet seating to a non‑Chinese interlocutor.
- SDG8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
